Research Group
in Analytic Philosophy

Abstract

We routinely attribute beliefs to groups as diverse as committees, boards, populaces, research teams, governments, courts, juries, legislatures, markets, and even mobs. There are two main points of contention in the literature when it comes to accounting for group beliefs. On the one hand, there is the dispute between so-called believers (those who claim that there is such a thing as group beliefs) and rejectionists (those who think that group beliefs are better understood as collective acceptances). On the other hand, there is the dispute between summativists and non-summativists: those who respectively endorse and reject the idea that a group believes a proposition only if at least one member of the group also believes it. In this talk, I side with believers by presenting arguments against rejectionism, and argue that group beliefs, unlike other group attitudes (e.g., group intentions), are best understood in summativist terms.